About The Novel

Raves & Praise

"Beautifully detailed and rich in exceptional characterization ... Curran's novel gently reminds readers that fantasy has a place in everyone's life, and dreams can come true. Uniquely uplifting and never didactic, this is a gem." -BOOKLIST, starred review

"With a masterful wit and clever twists, Sheila Curran has created an intricately woven mystery. Captivating, fast-paced, no-holds-barred storytelling, DIANA LIVELY IS FALLING DOWN defies pigeon-holing. Wrestling the complexities of motherhood, loss and betrayal, politics, the environment, and theme parks, it is at once intimate, domestic, and worldly. A debut to celebrate!" -Julianna Baggott, GIRLTALK, THE MISS AMERICA FAMILY, THE MADAM

"Brilliant, touching, and funny as hell, Diana Lively packs a powerful punch. A poignant and biting satire of contemporary family life, American business, ivory-tower academics, and trans-Atlantic cultural differences, this spirited romp through an Englishwoman's Arizona deserves a unique place of honor on any bookshelf. Diana is one of those stories that can linger forever in one's own memory and imagination, as a reference point for every new book that comes along, or even more, for life itself. Wry, engaging, and wise beyond words, Diana is bound to delight and amaze." -Carlos Eire, 2003 National Book Award winner, WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA

"DIANA LIVELY IS FALLING DOWN is a terrific pick-me-up. You couldn't find two more disparate landscapes than Oxford, England and Arizona, and that's exactly what one British woman discovers when she crosses the pond to find herself a fish-out-of-water -- only to realize that for the first time in her life, this means she can stand on her own two feet. Filled with characters who make you laugh out loud even as they break your heart, this is a funny, warm, inventive, original book."
-Jodi Picoult, NYT bestselling author of VANISHING ACTS and MY SISTER'S KEEPER

Traffic

Okay, you must have studied a bit of French to get this, but if you have, I promise, you will be crying, and it won't be the soap in your eyes. In the first paragraph of DIANA LIVELY IS FALLING DOWN, there's a line "Eleanor is wailing to the shampoo gods ..." Little did I know it would be prophetic, but this time it was me, sitting at my kitchen table, reading this in The Atlantic and crying out loud.

My friend Thomas has a theory that your best friends are the people you knew whenever it was you “came of age.”For some that’s high school, for others, college or early adulthood.

One of the silver linings in moving too often is that you are always being stretched past your previous boundaries, forced to come of age in a way you’d never anticipated before you pulled up roots and settled in yet another unfamiliar location.Thus, when my daughter asks who my best friend is, the answer is often a rambling discourse on where I’ve lived, who I’ve loved, what they have done for me, and why I think they are each the best.

It’s an unsatisfactory answer for a ten year old, who cannot imagine the blessings that await her once she’s cleared the hurdles of schoolyard cliques, once she understands that real best friends don’t require you to choose them above all other, and though it defies the meaning of the word, you truly can have several more than one.

I met Scotti my junior year in college, and our lives became intertwined when we fell in love with the two Johns, who were themselves best friends and graduate students, and who lived on a farm outside of town.I have a photo of Scotti and me leaning over a hoe, our arms around each other, our India print frocks setting us apart from the real farmers, who must have laughed at these hippie girls playing at being grown-ups with the best of intentions and a cluelessness undaunted by experience, or rather, our stunning lack thereof.

After college, we moved to Chicago’s north side and shared a huge sunny railroad flat on a street named Lill, home to what would become one of the city’s best known galleries for potters and sculptors, among whom we would find a circle of friends that have sustained us ever since.Lill Street Art Center

Here, the hippie skirts were a better fit, but in some ways I still felt like a fake.The two Johns were getting their Ph.D.s and Scotti had a real job. I, on the other hand, was waitressing and trying to reconcile my Latin American Studies degree with an aversion to travel (and exotic insects) rivaled only by the realization that most of the developing world’s problems had only been worsened by interference from outsiders.Waitressing was honest work, and if I wasn’t solving world hunger, I was at least feeding someone.

For some reason, the same Catholic conscience that had no trouble shacking up with the love of my life, balked at art, whether it be the paintings I made after work at night, or the novel I started in the light of day.Art seemed too superfluous and impractical to consider as a vocation, not when there were children starving in Biafra, not when there were teens being disappeared in Argentina.I admired Dorothy Day and Jane Adams, and felt that if I were worth my mettle, I’d follow in their sensibly shod steps.

Wrestling with my temperament and compulsions, I decided on law school, but not until John had finished his graduate degree.In the meantime, I’d waitress and write, and even take a year off to get my own Master’s in Comparative Literature, all of it justified under the rubric of career preparation.

It just didn’t sink in, that writers might exert profound influences of their own, despite the fact that John Steinbeck, and Mario Vargas Llosa and Isabel Allende had affected me, despite the fact that Ayn Rand would create the emotional scaffolding for so many conservatives who would rise to power in the decades to come.And so, for many years I considered my writing simply as a game played to hone my communication skills, not as my real work.

Imagine my surprise when one day, years later, I would finally be ready to apply to law school, only to discover that the writing had become more meaningful than I’d thought.Not only did I need to disappear into my fictional worlds, but, through an old Chicago connection (who’d hosted me in D.C. for a book party) I’d learned to write grant proposals, which paid as well as waitressing and from which I gained do-gooder brownie points galore, to say nothing of real world validation.

Somehow, in the process otherwise known as maturing, I finally discovered that while I waited for my real vocation, I’d already found one.Even more surprising, I’d slowly concluded that the escapist pleasures I drew from novels could, in and of themselves, be a worthy enterprise.People needed to eat, yes, but maybe they also needed to simply disappear from their own life and dive into someone else’s, not for political re-education, but simply for the sheer fun of it.

Fast forward to 2005, to the year of being published, when the good fortune of finding the perfect agent and then the perfect editor was marred only by my fear of not measuring up to their praise.How could I, a confirmed introvert, sell my book and myself without becoming one of those Amway people and driving off all of the dear friends I’d been lucky enough to make in my spurts of gregarity otherwise known as dinner parties?

It was touch-and-go with Multiple Personality Disorder until I happened upon Ray Bradbury (on CSPAN’s BookTV) talking about his own life and the others he’d touched, simply by staying true to the things he truly loved.He gave an example of the Buck Rogers comics he’d discarded when the other fifth grade boys laughed at them, a passion for which -- when Ray rebounded from his brush with inauthenticity -- led to his first best friend, with whom he’d shared a myriad of things he truly loved. For an approximation of his speech, read this link

It occurred to me while folding laundry and watching Bradbury that I had a choice.I could admit that I loved my book and wanted to share it, and that there was nothing wrong with that, or I could adopt a more disingenous attitude wherein sales, and all it connoted about selfish desires and capitalist motives, were grounds for a dishonorable discharge from the bohemian networks I’d loved and left in so many wonderful hometowns along the way.

It was almost a spiritual exercise, remembering the shaggy octogenarian’s litany of his passions, and reminding myself that something done with and in love can be holy, even when it includes the sort of shameless self-promotion otherwise known as publicity, even when it asks of friends and families that they too become part of my marketing pyramid, even when it includes a static-cling rear-window decal proclaiming to the world that Diana Lively is Falling Down.

I found my Chicago friends only too willing to help with my nefarious promotional schemes.Scotti, now married to Andy, connected me with a friend at Barbara’s Books in Oak Park, a venerable name in independent bookselling, where I gave a reading.Afterward, Scotti and Andy had arranged a soiree at Hemmingway’s, a bar in The Write Inn, across the street from Ernest’s childhood home, complete with gorgeous wines and food and their even more gorgeous clearinghouse of friends.

The next night, our mutual friend Myrtis had organized an open house for people who couldn’t make it the night before.Scotti and I met Myrtis in 1980, soon after her boyfriend Marty had treated me to my first Bruce Springsteen concert. They’re still a couple, with three daughters, impressive jobs downtown, and a lifetime membership in my best-friend club.

The night of the open house, Marty, director of a nonprofit watchdog for utilities, had been interviewed on several local news programs about a peculiar case of mistaken identity that was causing quite a stir, perhaps even a stink, on local airwaves.Two customers, let’s just call them Betty Green and Ted Lively, had received letters from their gas and cable companies, but instead of the more ordinary “Dear Mrs. Green” and “Dear Mr. Lively,” the salutations departed from the rules of your basic business communication. “Dear Bitch Dog Green,” and “Dear Scrotum Bag Lively,” much as they might run trippingly off the tongue, had, it appeared, offended the sensibilities of the recipients.

This was clearly an act of sabotage on the part of certain employees, who, Marty was quick to point out, had already been fired, but for whom certain sympathies might be extended, given the fact that customer service personnel for the firms in question were notoriously understaffed.By the time said customers had queued up to get their problems resolved, they tended to be testier than your average pissed-off person whose gas has been cut or whose cable is suddenly broadcasting a steady diet of Japanese fishing travelogues.

Such acts of rebellion, mere slips of the keyboard, might have been just too tempting to resist, when it came right down to it.Marty’s televised response, to all those watching in Chicagoland, was pretty revolutionary in and of itself, for it reminded us of the soul at the other end of the line, who might work for Big Brother, or Ma Bell, but is, in fact, someone pretty much like you and me, only paid a lot less to endure a lot more, and for whom, stepping out on that ledge of bad manners might have also included a transformation of identity akin to the art that provides us all such comfort and joy.The waitress in me clapped one hand slowly.Or to quote Ray Bradbury, or what I thought I heard him say,“Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.”

For all of those falling down, and all of those trying to fly, there’s something truly godly in minor insurrections, whether they are carried out in sensible shoes or composed of wax and feathers, or even in the incandescent irregularity of the newly-written word.